EDITORIAL: Orphans pawns in Vladimir Putin temper tantrum

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, presents a state award to famous Russian actor Konstantin Khabensky wearing a badge that reads "Children are outside politics!" during an award ceremony in the Kremlin in Moscow on Dec. 26. The upper chamber of Russia's parliament on Wednesday unanimously voted in favor of a measure banning Americans from adopting Russian children. It now goes to Putin to sign or turn down. (AP Photo)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Legislature moved last week to ban American adoptions of Russian orphans.

The ban promises to hurt no one more than the orphans. The conditions in Russian orphanages are notorious and there are an estimated 740,000 children lacking parents.

It goes without saying that the orphans are but pawns, having done nothing to deserve loss of a pathway that has provided American families for tens of thousands of them.

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The object of the legislative ban is an entirely unrelated issue -- a new U.S. law that provides for sanctions against Russians who violate the human rights of other Russians. The U.S. law requires compilation of a list of offenders, barring them from travel to the United States or ownership of assets here, according to The New York Times.

In a fit of pique, Russian lawmakers have taken their anger out on their nation's own defenseless, needy children.

When you think about it, the response makes perfect sense, in a twisted kind of way. Only a regime that cares little about human rights would think to take a dispute about human rights out on its own orphans, whom the Russian state woefully neglects in the first place.

That sort of bullying is second nature to Putin, who has built his post-KGB political career upon regular dollops of tough-guy posturing. It plays well to a Russian public that mourns the loss of national prestige that had been maintained by Soviet oppression and arms.

As for Russian lawmakers, their exaggerated nationalism has overwhelmed all reason or sense of reality. Legislators said that some Russian children have been adopted by Americans to be used for organ transplants or to become sex toys or cannon fodder for the U.S. Army.

It's a measure of how thoroughly Russia's place in the world has changed that its government now threatens the United States not by subtly rattling a nuclear saber, but by making a shameless show of knocking about their own orphans.

Although taking place on an international stage, this reaction is very much a kind of domestic violence. All Putin needs to complete the picture is to put on a wife-beater, grab a bottle of vodka, and kick the family dog, for good measure.

That said, it's not at all clear that unilateral U.S. action against Russian human rights abuses is productive.

Russia, like many of the world's nations, has only a passing familiarity with the concept of human rights. Steady pressure by international agreement would seem to be a better approach.

In the end, we hope calmer heads will prevail, if only for the sake of the children.